All I really want is for people to experience the glories and the monumental achievements of A Most Violent Year for themselves sans too much input or explanation from me.

Subtle and beautifully heartfelt. Selma is an important movie, yes, but it is also a great one.

There’s no denying Birdman is impossible to take your eyes off of. From the opening image of a meteor careening across the sky, to its final moments when an actor combines insanity and inspiration into some form of creative euphoria, the movie is a vital, rhythmically alive character study looking at creation in all its complexity.

Boyhood is remarkable stuff, filled with drama, intrigue, suspense, laughter, tears and all the rest that comes with that.

Make no mistake, Obvious Child is a stunning debut. More than that, it’s also a terrific piece of cinema I’ll be thinking about and extolling the virtues of for a heck of a long time to come.

In many ways Locke is the thriller of the year, a real time, ticking clock masterwork of tension and suspense that’s as unrelenting and unmerciful as anything likely to see a release in all of 2014. In others, it is nothing more than a quickly paced melodrama of responsibility and regret, focusing entirely on a single character, the choices he has made and the price he is forced to pay when the bill for his self-centered actions come tragically due.

a SIFF 2013 review Nothing Cheap About These Bleakly Satirical Thrills Cheap Thrills is the best movie you are likely going to be too scared to see. An eviscerating satirical assault on financial disparity and the smug, narcissistic tendencies of a seemingly uncaring elite coupled with the anything-goes neediness of a working class oftentimes willing […]

Beauteous Ernest & Célestine C’est Magnifique France’s Ernest & Célestine was up against both Disney’s Frozen (the eventual winner) and Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. I had not seen it before the Oscars had been handed out so I couldn’t really say whether or not it deserved […]

Anderson’s Budapest Hotel a Comedic Masterwork I’ve said more than a handful of times in the past that the works of Wes Anderson are arguably made for certain palates, each motion picture a fanciful journey into a highly stylized world acquired tastes adore while everyone else scratches their collective chins wondering what all the fuss […]